John Cooper Clarke looks back: ‘Getting older sucks – it’s marginally better than being dead’
The punk poet on his heroin years, dressing like Ronnie Wood, and achieving his boyhood ambition
Born in Salford in 1949, John Cooper Clarke is a poet and author. He cut his teeth in the clubs of Manchester before signing to Epic Records in 1978. He performed alongside the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, the Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello, scoring a UK Top 40 hit with Gimmix! Play Loud in 1979. His poem Evidently Chickentown was later used in The Sopranos, introducing him to a whole new generation, and his work is now on the GCSE English syllabus. As well as three poetry collections he published a memoir, I Wanna Be Yours, in 2020. His new poetry collection, Have It, is out now and he is touring the UK until 27 November.
This is me dressed up as a cowboy with a hat and six-shooter. Not the full schmear with the chaps and all the rest, but the best I could do. I was crazy about westerns. Still am, actually. My uncle Dennis was the only camera-owning relative at the time, so he would have taken the photo in our apartment above a chemist’s shop in Salford, located on a busy traffic intersection.
My childhood is an ever-fading mystery to me, but somewhere around this time I know I got diagnosed with tuberculosis. Something serious like that takes you out of the world, but once I stopped coughing up arterial blood and scar tissue it wasn’t a problem. I stopped going to school, which was great, and not before I’d learned the rudiments of literacy. Really it happened at an opportune moment in that all that I had any energy to do was read.
Once I had recovered, life went back to normal, and I went back to hating every minute of school. Apart from when I was in the company of my teacher, Mr Malone. He was the one who introduced me to poetry as a phonetic medium. He didn’t single me out as a boy genius or anything like that, but he did convey to the entire class a love of poetry. He read it out loud and we had to learn it off by heart. I would have to stand up and reiterate whatever verse he requested.
I was a mod in my teenage years – dissatisfied with everything all the time, aside from music, girls and clothes. Poetry, too. One day we had these career officers in, asking us what we wanted to do. I didn’t get any encouragement when I said that I wanted to be a professional poet. They said: “You can’t make a living out of poetry, blah, blah, blah.” When I told my dad, he replied: “Name one poet that’s ever made a living.” The way he saw it, every poet was just swinging the lead. “Get a job,” was his advice. “Keep poetry as a hobby.” But I was determined I could somehow make a living in the entertainment industry.
I knew I had to apply for grants from governmental bodies, but as someone who isn’t very good at filling in forms, close to phobic, I didn’t fancy that route. In any case, I didn’t think I would be very successful, as I had already sent my stuff to publishers, with a view to them putting my poems in some kind of anthology of modern verse. Of course, it didn’t happen, because who was I? I realised the best way was to declaim my poetry in public at various places of entertainment. That’s been my MO ever since. For most of my career, I’ve been a club act.
From the very start I’ve known that presentation is important – especially because I’m taking poetry into the world of showbusiness. A place where people don’t think it should exist. I went to see the Birds in 1965. Ronnie Wood had spiky, unruly hair, and a big beak nose like me. I figured: he looks good, I’ll go for that. I’ve been dressing vaguely like him ever since.
Bernard Manning gave me my first ever paid gig. He tried to put me off at first, though. I went into the Embassy Club in Manchester in the afternoon knowing that he’d be free. He said, “What is it you do?” I told him it was poetry. He said, “They don’t like poetry here, kid. Half of them can’t fucking read.” Still, he gave me 15 minutes, and I was met with the poet’s worst enemy: indifference. Nobody shouted anything rude out, nobody threw anything. I was faced with an audience of people who were not interested and conversed with each other instead. That’s about as bad as it gets.
By the time I went to the cabaret joints in the centre of Manchester in the mid-70s I was prepared for anything. It wasn’t until I met Howard Devoto, who was then the singer with the Buzzcocks, who said, “What are you doing pottering around in these cheesy cabaret joints, Jonny? You should be working with us in the world of punk rock.” After that, I started moving around with the Buzzcocks and the Fall, and went from strength to strength. The punk world held no terrors after the Embassy Club.
The 80s were my wilderness years. Punk rock only lasted for two years, then it lost its fun and style. The 80s was about conspicuous consumption, expensive promotional videos and new romanticism. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but when it got sleek, I realised anything punk was a non-starter. I suffered for that, but I never stopped working. I had to work to get money, to get dope. Most people avoided heroin because they didn’t like the idea of injecting themselves. But I was straight in with the hypodermic. I preferred the sterility of the intravenous. Looking back, it is almost as though somebody else did all that – and I’ve got nothing but regrets. Heroin was a stupid thing to do.
Everything changed in the 1990s. I met Evie, the woman who would go on to be my wife, but I was still using junk, so it was the longest engagement ever. Eventually I went to rehab, and then we had our daughter Stella. I was used to erratic hours anyway, so having a baby didn’t bother me, and it was a lot of fun having a kid. The next thing was my poem Evidently Chickentown being used for the credits of The Sopranos. The new wave of people discovering my poems felt sensational. Later on Arctic Monkeys adapted my poem I Wanna Be Yours. I also started going to America again, which I hadn’t done for 30 years, due to convictions of one kind or another. All of which improved my life completely.
I still love writing poetry, but getting older sucks. It’s marginally better than being dead. I’m totally computer illiterate. I’m not a modern guy, in any sense of the word. But I remain quite a careful dresser. I’ve got standards. I don’t know why people sit down at a particular age and think: “I’d better stop looking like that.” Not me. I’ve got to maintain my front so I can keep making my game.
On the plus side, I get to perform at large theatres now. And TV’s never been better. Bangers and Cash, Wheeler Dealers. Portillo’s Railway Journeys is what I like. He takes us to those places too distant for the bike.
The boy in the picture would be thrilled to know he was making a living while not actually having to have a job. That was always my ambition: remunerative idleness. Idleness where people pay you for the results of your idle hours. So I got what I wanted.